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      Cartier Joins the Sponsors of the Venice Film Festival

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      As part of the agreement, the Paris high jewelry house will present an annual award, with the first going to the director Ridley Scott.Along with lavish screenings of new films starring Oscar winners like Penélope Cruz and Olivia Colman, the 2021 Venice Film Festival will feature a different type of premiere: the debut of Cartier as a new main sponsor.The festival “has elegance. It has exclusivity. It has glamour,” said Arnaud Carrez, Cartier’s chief marketing officer. “And that’s exactly what we want to build on.”As part of a three-year agreement, the festival, scheduled to begin on Sept. 1, will present the Cartier Glory to the Filmmaker Award annually. This year’s recipient, chosen by the festival director Alberto Barbera, will be Ridley Scott, whose new film, “The Last Duel,” is scheduled to be shown at the festival on Sept. 10. (The award is to be presented immediately before the film’s screening.)The trophy — which will feature a panther, one of the house’s recurring motifs — is being made at the Cartier Creation Studio in Paris.Neither Cartier nor the festival would detail the financial aspects of the relationship, but film festivals can generate millions of dollars from sponsorships, which are typically offered on a variety of levels. There are two other new festival sponsors this year, both in less prominent tiers than Cartier: Repower, a Swiss energy company, and the Chinese electronics brand Xiaomi.For luxury brands like Cartier, choosing events and companies for partnerships can take some care. “The brand values need to be in line with the kind of art or the kind of activity they are sponsoring,” said Federica Levato, a Milan-based partner for Bain & Company.And, she said, consumers expect synergy in sponsorships. “If a brand is sponsoring an event with no link between the brand and the event, the customer will find it strange,” she said. (Last year, the festival had four main sponsors; three returning are Armani beauty, Campari and Mastercard.)Roberto Cicutto, president of La Biennale di Venezia, which oversees the festival and other cultural events in the city, wrote in an email that Cartier fit well as a sponsor because it had “the ability to best interpret a collaboration with a cultural institution.”Cartier has partnered with cinema-focused events before — like the Deauville American Film Festival, the French event it sponsored from 2005 through 2014 — as well as numerous art exhibitions through the Fondation Cartier, including current shows in Milan and Paris. “Art and culture have always been intimately intertwined with the history of Cartier,” Mr. Carrez said. More

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      Los Angeles to Require Masks at Large Outdoor Concerts and Events

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      The order comes as the spread of the Delta variant has driven up caseloads.Facing a continuing increase in coronavirus cases, Los Angeles County said Tuesday that it would require masks be worn at large outdoor concerts and sporting events that attract more than 10,000 people.The new regulation, which takes effect at 11:59 p.m. on Thursday, means that people attending the Hollywood Bowl and Dodger Stadium, as well as outdoor music festivals and what the county describes as “mega events,” will now have to wear masks. The rule will apply to people regardless of their vaccination status.People will be allowed to slip off their masks when eating and drinking, but only briefly.The order came as cities around the nation have taken steps to try to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Chicago joined Los Angeles County, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and other areas to require masks in public indoor places. New York City is requiring proof of vaccination for dining and entertainment activities indoors; Broadway is requiring proof of vaccination and masks as it reopens.The new rules requiring masks at large outdoor events in Los Angeles came as the county reported that cases, hospitalizations and positivity rates have increased markedly. Los Angeles County has been averaging 3,361 new cases a day, an 18 percent increase over its average two weeks ago, according to data collected by The New York Times.Los Angeles County has been aggressive in instituting masks requirements in the face of evidence that the Delta variant of the virus has been spreading. It required people to wear masks in indoor public spaces last month, again regardless of vaccination status.Covid policies at the Hollywood Bowl have shifted repeatedly during the year as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which runs the Bowl, has sought to follow changing county regulations. It has drawn big crowds over the past six weeks. With few exceptions, people in the audience have been maskless, as had been permitted under county rules. But they have tended to put on their masks as they join the crush of people moving down the crowded walkways after the show. More

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      in Theater

      A Puppet Festival Returns to New York, All Grown Up

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      After more than a year of pandemic-related crises, Manuel Antonio Morán wanted to give a gift to New York. He envisioned something lighthearted and uplifting, but also thought-provoking and as varied as the city itself. The answer? Puppets.But there’s nothing here to prompt sneers or eye rolling. The International Puppet Fringe Festival NYC, which arrives this week with over 50 shows and events, more than a dozen short films and five accompanying exhibitions, including “Puppets of New York” at the Museum of the City of New York, is far from a kiddie celebration.“The wrong perception in the United States is that puppetry is just for children or to be used for education,” Morán, the festival’s artistic director, said in an interview at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center, the programming’s Lower East Side hub. “That’s something I’m fighting every single day.”The works on display in the “Puppets of New York” exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York include Bruce Cannon’s marionette Lady Love Power (inspired by Diana Ross).Karsten Moran for The New York TimesRolando, a puppet by Agrippino Manteo whose family immigrated to New York a century ago. They specialized in making complex metal-armored Sicilian marionettes.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesAlan Semok’s Howdy Doody marionette (recostumed by Richard Liljeblad).Karsten Moran for The New York TimesRick Lyon’s hand puppet Trekkie Monster from “Avenue Q” and others in the exhibition, which opens Aug. 13, highlight puppetry traditions.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesThis festival, which is offering 60 percent of its performances free (tickets to the rest are $15 each), may help convince the doubters. Although Morán founded Puppet Fringe NYC as a biennial in 2018 — Covid-19 prevented its 2020 edition — this version is almost twice the size of the original and essentially a rebirth. Beginning on Wednesday with the first Puppet Week NYC, which comprises five days of live events, the festival continues through Aug. 31, mostly in virtual form, with shows from countries including India, Israel, Argentina, Spain, South Korea and the Ivory Coast.It “represents the whole immigrant ethos of the Lower East Side, channeled through the lens of these other citizens that are puppets,” said Libertad O. Guerra, the executive director of the Clemente. The center is producing Puppet Fringe NYC with Teatro SEA, the downtown Latino theater Morán started in 1985, and Morán’s own agency, Grupo Morán.This year’s festival will also have workshops in puppet construction, four of them for adults. And for those whose tastes run to the politically barbed or the comically risqué, two grown-ups-only puppet evenings are planned, one of them called the “Bawdy, Naughty Puppet Cabaret/Puppet Slam.”“They’re including elements of burlesque,” Morán said of the slam, to be presented on Saturday by the Puppetry Guild of Greater New York. “There might be a little bit of skin,” he added with a laugh.Herbert and Lulu, the hobo bugs, by Craig Marin and Olga Felgemacher, as they are installed at the Museum of the City of New York.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesInstallation view of Shari Lewis and James Patrick Brymer’s hand puppet Lamb Chop, with costumes by Pat Brymer Creations. On Wednesday, Lewis’s daughter Mallory and Lamb Chop will perform “The Shari Lewis Legacy Show.”Karsten Moran for The New York TimesBut perhaps this festival’s most novel element is its partnership with the Museum of the City of New York, which will open its 2,500-square-foot exhibition with a sold-out celebration on Thursday evening. “Puppets of New York,” which runs until early April at the uptown Manhattan museum, features photographs, videos, films and sets, as well as more than 60 puppets. They range from cardboard finger models designed by Penny Jones to José A. López Alemán’s 12-foot-tall Titanya, the fairy queen from “Sueño,” Teatro SEA’s Afro-Caribbean version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”“The main argument of the show uptown is that the history of puppetry in New York City mirrors the demographics of the city,” said Monxo López, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation fellow who curated “Puppets of New York.” And, he noted, “many different puppeteers that reflect that diversity have not been as visible as others. It was important to tell that story of diversity, of visibility, of inclusiveness, in a way that also showed joy and possibility.”Derek Fordjour and Nick Lehane’s puppet (called a man whose name is never known) from their 2020 production “Fly Away.”Karsten Moran for The New York TimesTo that end, the exhibition includes not only designs by famous masters like Jim Henson and Ralph Lee, but also work by artists like the Manteo family, who brought complex metal-armored Sicilian marionettes when they immigrated to New York a century ago, and Derek Fordjour and Nick Lehane, whose 2020 puppet production, “Fly Away,” featured a nameless young Black man.“My strategy was that each object had to tell as many stories as possible,” said López, who also collaborated with the author and curator Leslee Asch to organize “Puppets of New York: Downtown at the Clemente,” a complementary exhibition on view through Sept. 30. It joins three other art shows that will be there through August: “Teatro SEA’s International Collaborations”; “Murals of Puppetry Around the World,” featuring Alfredo Hernández’s paintings; and “Vince Anthony’s Legacy,” which celebrates the retired founder of the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, to whom the festival is dedicated.The exhibitions reveal a synergy with the festival’s live performances, which will mostly be presented outdoors. (All in-person events require registration and face masks.) Chinese Theater Works, which will deliver puppet dragons and the Chinese judge of the dead to the Clemente’s plaza over four nights in “The Triple Zhongkui Pageant,” will be represented by shadow puppets at the Museum of the City of New York. Also at both those locations will be Lamb Chop, perhaps the most memorable — and feistiest — sock puppet of all time, who appeared on children’s television for 40 years with her ventriloquist co-star, Shari Lewis.“She’s the Velveteen Rabbit of puppets,” said Lewis’s daughter, Mallory Lewis, referring to Margery Williams’s children’s classic about a stuffed animal that becomes real. On Wednesday evening, Mallory Lewis and Lamb Chop will perform “The Shari Lewis Legacy Show,” an interactive production featuring a new, pandemic-related ending. “It’s a tribute to the first responders,” she said in a phone interview.The City Parks Foundation’s production of “Little Red’s Hood” will be performed in both English and Spanish.via Museum of the City of New York Other family-friendly performances will take place all weekend. Bruce Cannon, artistic director of the Swedish Cottage Marionette Theater in Central Park, contributes his talents to the City Parks Foundation’s jazzy production of “Little Red’s Hood,” to be performed in both English (Saturday) and Spanish (Sunday).Besides this fairy tale, in which the Wolf stalks Little Red through Manhattan, Cannon will present his own “Harlem River Drive,” a one-man homage, on Sunday.“It explores how Harlem became Harlem,” he said in a phone interview. While touching on serious topics like racism and the Depression, it also offers joyful music and multiple kinds of puppets, all operated by Cannon. They usually include a marionette inspired by Diana Ross — absent from the festival performance because it’s in “Puppets of New York” — and two of Michael Jackson. (When was the last time you saw a moonwalking marionette?)The festival will host three performances of Deborah Hunt’s “La Macanuda.” Here, an image from a 2019 performance at the National Puppetry Festival in Minneapolis.Richard TermineDeborah Hunt, a New Zealander living in Puerto Rico, will also examine a community’s evolution in three performances of “La Macanuda,” whose title, she said in a phone conversation, means “a large, friendly being.” Hunt, whose work appears in the Teatro SEA exhibition, portrays the character in a puppet that encases her entire body. Accompanied by cutouts, scrolls and a smaller puppet, she enacts a wordless tale — essentially a statement supporting immigrants — in which La Macanuda rescues the victims of a city-destroying ogre. “She’s a kindly departure for me,” said Hunt, whose work often tends toward the macabre.The Clemente’s own neighborhood stars in nightly performances of “Los Grises/The Gray Ones,” Morán’s music-filled show about the community’s elders, and Saturday and Sunday in “Once Upon a Time in the Lower East Side,” which the center commissioned from the Junktown Duende collective, a troupe that creates puppets from recycled materials.Its production is “centered around a tenement where waves of immigrants settled,” said Adam Ende, a member of Junktown Duende. And it’s “specifically about the history of immigrant puppetry.”While the show deals with gentrification and police brutality, it also illustrates the transformation of a blighted space into a community garden. And like Puppet Fringe NYC, it’s a testament to strength amid hard times. “The struggle continues,” Ende said. “And we’re celebrating together, endlessly.” More

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      ‘Dune’ and Princess Diana Biopic to Debut at a Starry Venice Film Festival

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      Hollywood blockbusters are back on the program after a less celebrity-driven edition last year, but the event will still be far from business as usual.“Dune,” Denis Villeneuve’s highly anticipated science-fiction epic starring Timothée Chalamet, and Pablo Larraín’s “Spencer,” which dramatizes Princess Diana’s decision to divorce Prince Charles, are among the movies that will premiere at this year’s Venice Film Festival.The festival, scheduled to run from Sept. 1-11, will also see the presentation of new films by Pedro Almodóvar (“Madres Paralelas,” starring Penélope Cruz), Ridley Scott (“The Last Duel,” with Matt Damon) and Jane Campion (the Benedict Cumberbatch-starring “The Power of the Dog”), as well as Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut, “The Lost Daughter,” based on a novel by Elena Ferrante and starring Olivia Colman.The star-studded lineup, announced at a news conference on Monday, suggests that this year’s festival will be a more glamorous affair after last year’s scaled-down pandemic edition, which featured few celebrity names.The presence of some Hollywood blockbusters on the program shows that “Americans have emerged from the lockdown and they are ready to restart,” Alberto Barbera, the festival’s artistic director, said at the news conference.Some of the most anticipated U.S.-funded movies will appear out of competition, including “Dune,” the latest attempt to adapt that Frank Herbert novel following efforts by David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Scott’s “The Last Duel,” starring Damon as a knight who challenges his squire, played by Adam Driver, to a duel after his wife (Jodie Comer) accuses the sidekick of rape.“Halloween Kills,” the latest movie in the “Halloween” horror franchise, will also premiere out of competition. It stars Jamie Lee Curtis, who will receive the festival’s lifetime achievement award.In the competition, Almodóvar’s “Madres Paralelas” (“Parallel Mothers”), about two women who meet in a hospital where they are about to give birth, is one of 21 films that will compete for the Golden Lion, the festival’s main prize.It will be up against Larraín’s “Spencer,” starring Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana; Campion’s “The Power of the Dog,” about a sadistic ranch owner; and Paul Schrader’s “The Card Counter,” about a gambler caught in a revenge plot.Five of the 21 competition films are directed by women, Barbera said — down from eight last year. “It might seem a step backward, but that is just a partial point of view,” he added. Female directors appeared to have been hit by the coronavirus pandemic more than their male counterparts, he said, adding, “I really hope they will have a comeback.”Bong Joon Ho, the director of “Parasite,” will chair the competition jury that also includes the British actress Cynthia Erivo and Chloé Zhao, the director of “Nomadland,” which won last year’s Golden Lion and went on to win the Academy Award for best film.This year’s festival may see the return of blockbusters to Venice, but it will still be far from business as usual. Roberto Cicutto, the festival’s president, said at the news conference that rules introduced last year to limit the spread of the coronavirus, such as compulsory seat reservations and masks for indoor screenings, would likely continue.In line with Italian government regulations coming into force Aug. 6, anyone attending screenings, or even eating indoors at the festival site, will be required to show proof of having received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, a recent negative test result or a certificate showing proof of having recovered from the illness in the past six months.Italy’s government announced the requirements this month as virus numbers rose across the country. On Sunday, the public health authorities reported new 4,742 cases. That is far down from this year’s peak of over 25,000 new daily cases in March, but the rise in cases has caused concern in a country that the pandemic hit hard last year.“This year, we hoped we could be more relaxed,” Cicutto said. “For the time being, it isn’t so. But we continue to hope.” More

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      Avignon Festival Forges Ahead, Despite Virus Restrictions

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      The French theater festival’s Fringe offering is giving some respite from the pandemic, even as new rules to stop coronavirus transmission are making it harder to get to the shows.AVIGNON, France — It sounds like a virologist’s nightmare: 1,070 theater productions; 116 venues, most of them within Avignon’s cramped medieval center; and everywhere, festivalgoers sitting shoulder to shoulder in indoor spaces.Yet the Fringe offering at this summer’s Avignon Festival — which runs parallel to the main event, and is known as “le Off” — has forged ahead, even as the more contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus became the dominant strain in France.Is it problematic to enjoy excellent performances under the circumstances? With the rituals of Avignon, including unmasked performers handing out publicity fliers in the street, came a sense of normalcy. Still, a sneaky sense of guilt permeated conversations with theatergoers — not least when new restrictions were announced, shortly after the Avignon Festival began.Last week, the French government decreed that a “health pass” — a QR code proving full vaccination or a negative coronavirus test result — would be required from July 21 for all venues with over 50 seats. Restaurants, bars and trains will follow from Aug. 1. (The health pass requirement previously applied only to events with more than 1,000 audience members.)Frustration was palpable in Avignon in the days before the rule came into force. While roughly half of Fringe venues are small enough to skirt it, some companies opted to leave early, and bigger shows reported ticket returns and a drop in bookings. Last weekend, as widespread demonstrations against the policy swept France, protesters filled Avignon’s biggest avenue, shouting “Liberté!” (“Freedom!”)Marc Arnaud in “The Metamorphosis of Storks,” his one-man show at the Théâtre du Train Bleu.Alejandro GuerreroWhile the Avignon Festival’s official lineup (“le In,” in local parlance) went from bleak to bleaker in its themes, Fringe fare at least offered some respite from pandemic worries, since comedy has always been a prominent part of this less highbrow portion of the festival.Two original one-man shows, by Mehdi-Emmanuel Djaadi and Marc Arnaud, combine jokes and impressions with explorations of deep-seated inner conflicts. Djaadi’s “Coming Out,” especially, is an exercise in stereotype busting. The coming out in question is religious: The show recounts the 34-year-old comedian’s conversion from Islam to Catholicism.Support for his choice was scarce, as Djaadi tells it at the aptly named Théâtre des Corps Saints (Theater of the Holy Bodies). His family, of Algerian descent, felt he was turning his back on them; a priest explained that he didn’t want any trouble; in artistic circles, many were ill at ease with what they saw as the Catholic Church’s homophobia and conservatism.Yet instead of expressing the resentment he might have felt, Djaadi looks back on his journey, from teenage rebellion and drug dealing to a Catholic wedding, with amused affection. He points to contradictions on both sides, and France’s churchgoers come in for pointed satire, too.In “The Metamorphosis of Storks,” Arnaud focuses on a much shorter stretch of time. He and his wife went through the process of in vitro fertilization, and we meet Arnaud as he is about to donate a sperm sample — a process that brings up far more feelings than he expected.Morgane Peters as Effie in “Iphigenia in Splott,” directed by Blandine Pélissier at Artéphile.Blandine PélissierAs he stalls impatient hospital staff, his monologue covers his sexual education, his attempts at therapy and anxiety about parenthood. It’s a brisk, honest reckoning with the travails of masculinity, which packed the Théâtre du Train Bleu to the rafters (before the health pass requirement was implemented).Not that Avignon audiences were turned off by darker shows. At Artéphile, one of the few Fringe venues to also function as a year-round cultural space, the director Blandine Pélissier offered a stark and convincing production, “Iphigenia in Splott.”The Welsh playwright Gary Owen is relatively unknown in France, but his 2015 reworking of the Iphigenia myth — translated by Pélissier and Kelly Rivière — should prompt curiosity about his work. Here, the sacrificial victim is Effie, from the Cardiff district of Splott, a blaze of raging energy who becomes unexpectedly pregnant. This 90-minute monologue convincingly attributes the lack of support she encounters to social and medical service cuts, and the actress Morgane Peters takes the role from hard-edge anger to pain with poignant ease.Productions with larger casts were a bigger challenge this year, given that a positive coronavirus test among the company was enough to call a show off, and the director and actress Julie Timmerman downsized her show “A Democrat” as a result. Timmerman retooled this excellent production about Edward Bernays, the American nephew of Freud known as “the father of public relations,” for just two actors (Mathieu Desfemmes and herself). The result is adroitly written and witty, a worthy look at the dangers of Bernays’ techniques when they’re used for propaganda purposes.While the Avignon Festival’s official, curated lineup involves far fewer productions than the Fringe, it was hit with a handful of coronavirus-related cancellations. The artistic teams of two choreographers, Dada Masilo and Dimitris Papaioannou, were unable to travel to Avignon, while Eva Doumbia’s “Autophagies” saw its run interrupted when members of the cast and crew had to go into isolation after coming into contact with an infected person.Mathieu Desfemmes and Julie Timmerman in “A Democrat.”Roland BaduelTwo European productions that went ahead make a lasting impression. Emma Dante, of Italy, choreographs as much as she directs, and in “Misericordia,” theater becomes dance and vice versa. In it, three women raise a child, Arturo, who is described as mentally disabled and whose mother was a victim of domestic violence. Together, they form a bickering, complex family. The dancer Simone Zambelli not only captures Arturo’s twitching, disjointed body, he spins his physical vulnerability and moments of joy into poetry, knotting himself into expressive shapes.Avignon also hosted the stage version of “Pieces of a Woman.” Before it became a film starring Vanessa Kirby last year, the playwright Kata Weber and the director Kornel Mundruczo imagined it for the TR Warszawa playhouse in Warsaw, and the Polish cast delivered a gut punch in Avignon at the Lycée Théodore Aubanel.The play starts with the same lengthy labor scene as the film, but it covers less narrative ground after the central couple’s baby is stillborn. Whereas the screen version details the trial of a midwife who attended to the birth, this is only hinted at as a possibility onstage, and Maja, who lost her child, refuses to go through with it. Instead, the characters’ grief plays out over a long family dinner at the home of Maja’s mother.The result requires more patience on viewers’ part, but rewards it with a fully formed portrait of a family adrift. In that sense, the stage version of “Pieces of a Woman” completes Weber and Mundruczo’s puzzle: Let’s hope Avignon won’t be its only international stop.The cast of “Pieces of a Woman,” by the playwright Kata Weber and the director Kornel Mundruczo.Christophe Raynaud de Lage/Festival d’Avignon More

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      How the Cannes Film Festival Changed

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      How the Cannes Film Festival ChangedStephanie GoodmanIn New York, watching France 🇫🇷 Violette Franchi for The New York TimesThe Cannes Film Festival returned after a year off. Unlike other festivals, which went online during the pandemic, Cannes organizers had vowed to wait until an in-person event was possible.All is not exactly back to normal → More

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      On the Scene: Cannes Film Festival 🇫🇷

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      On the Scene: Cannes Film Festival 🇫🇷Kyle BuchananReporting from the French RivieraThe standing ovation for “Annette” — an esoteric musical with songs from the band Sparks — lasted so long (over five minutes!), Adam Driver and Leos Carax, its director, both lit up cigarettes in the theater. More

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      Moshing in the Rain: The Tenuous Return of the British Music Festival

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      Spending three days camping at a muddy music festival is a British tradition. But event operators fear that few will go ahead this summer, despite a trial last weekend.DONNINGTON PARK, England — At 5 p.m. on Friday, a metal band called Death Blooms walked onstage in a field here and launched into a pummeling track to open Download Festival, Britain’s first large-scale music festival to take place since the Covid-19 pandemic began.A second later, several hundred rain-soaked fans — including two men dressed as bananas — began careering into one another in front of the stage, arms and legs flailing, smiling ecstatically as they formed Britain’s first legal mosh pit in 15 months.After 10 minutes, Jim Ellison, one of the bananas, rushed out of the tent to catch his breath. “It’s so good to be back to normality,” said Ellison, 19. He acknowledged that most wouldn’t define normalcy as “a man in a banana costume moshing,” before cutting the interview short as Death Blooms started playing a song called “Life is Pain.”“I’m really sorry,” Ellison said, excusing himself, “but I love this tune.” He ran straight back into the pit.When the metal band Death Blooms opened Download, a mosh pit quickly formed in front of the stage.Joe Giddens/Press Association, via Associated PressSince the 1970s, music festivals have been a key part of the British summer: events where teenagers get a first taste of parent-free vacations, music fans find community and people generally get very muddy and carefree. But there is widespread concern that few events will go ahead this year despite nearly half of Britain’s population having been fully vaccinated against Covid-19. And organizers say they risk going bankrupt.Last week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that social distancing measures would continue in England until at least July 19 — almost a month after all restrictions were planned to be lifted. Within days, several major festivals were canceled for the second year in a row, with organizers saying they couldn’t afford to pay suppliers if there was no guarantee that the events would occur.“There seems to be a whole body of evidence saying, ‘You can do outside events safely,’ but for some reason the government won’t let us,” Chris Smith, the director of WOMAD, a world music festival, said in a telephone interview. His event was scheduled for July 22, and Smith was hoping that the government would provide support so the event could go ahead.British festivals range from world-renowned events like Glastonbury — which turns a farm in southwestern England into a temporary city for one week each year — to scrappier productions like Tribfest, an event for cover bands.In 2019, almost 1,000 were held, attracting 5.2 million attendees, according to the Association of Independent Festivals, a trade body. That year, festivals generated 1.7 billion pounds, $2.3 billion, for Britain’s economy.Download was initially canceled in March. This weekend’s hastily arranged special edition was able to go ahead only because it is part of a government trial to see whether and how cultural life can return safely. Previous pilot events — two 3,000-person club nights and a 5,000-capacity rock concert in Liverpool — led to eight cases of potential coronavirus transmission, according to one of the scientists involved, Iain Buchan.Arriving on the first day of Download for a typically rainy and carefree British festival. Joe Giddens/Press Association, via Associated PressDownload 2021 had a significantly reduced capacity: The three-day metal, punk and hard rock festival usually sees over 110,000 hard-rock fans camp in Donnington Park — a set of fields next to a racetrack in Leicestershire, England — to watch bands like Slipknot and Slayer. But for the government trial, only 10,000 fans were allowed, and the lineup featured only British acts to avoid the risks of international travel and quarantines.Attendees had to take a coronavirus test before going in, and agreed to also do one five days after the festival so that scientists could see whether the event caused the spread of coronavirus. But once inside in the grounds, masks weren’t required, while headbanging, moshing and drunken conversations at the camp site were prevalent.Melvin Benn, the director of Festival Republic, Download’s organizer, said he wasn’t concerned about a coronavirus outbreak at the site given the testing system. “I probably need to be more worried about trench foot,” he said while sheltering from a downpour.Attendees also weren’t worried about catching Covid. Harry Jackson, 26, a theater technician, said that the only anxiety he’d had around the festival was doing the pre-event test. “I sat there staring at it for half an hour going, ‘Please be negative, please be negative, I don’t want to miss this,’” he said. “I consider Download my home,” he added. “It’s my family.”The organizers of Britain’s other festivals say they can only be sure that their events will go ahead this summer if the government creates an insurance initiative to guarantee their costs if the country delays its reopening again. Austria and Germany have adopted such programs, but the British government has not, despite pressure from politicians.Last month, the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, a cross-party group of lawmakers, said in a report on festivals that there would be a hole in the “lives of music lovers and makers alike” this summer as a “direct result of the government’s refusal to back insurance for the sector.”At least one festival has found a creative solution. Last month, Brainchild — a three-day event for up-and-coming musicians and theater makers that is planned for the beginning of August — asked its 2,500 attendees to agree to be refunded only half their ticket price if the event were canceled so the organizers could start paying acts and equipment suppliers.Only 106 people declined to lose the £60, Marina Blake, the festival’s creative director, said in a telephone interview. “It was extraordinary,” she said. “It shows people are so desperate to have something to look forward to,” she added, noting that such an initiative was probably not viable for large events.Ben Barlow, the frontman for Neck Deep, said during the band’s set that he was glad to be able to perform again.Katja Ogrin/Getty ImagesAt Download, the relief to be back at a festival was palpable. During the pop-punk act Neck Deep’s set, the singer Ben Barlow said, “This is our first gig in two years, and I never want to wait that long again.”“If we’re the lab rats, let’s give them a good experiment,” he added, encouraging the heaving crowd to mosh. Barlow looked close to tears several times during the set.On Saturday morning, the scene at Donnington Park was typical for a British music festival. Music fans wandered around bleary-eyed, and two interviewees said they’d decided to skip the on-site showers and instead freshen up with a combination of wet wipes and hand sanitizer.At 11:30 a.m. James Carroll, 23, stood by a stage, waiting for the day’s music to start. He was hurting a bit from moshing the day before, he said, but it was nothing that a few cans of beer couldn’t sort out. “Day two, straight back on it,” he said.Soon, a band called Lotus Eater took to the stage, its singer screaming into a microphone as his band created a cacophony behind him.Immediately, the mosh pit began again. There were no men in banana costumes this time, but soon there was someone dressed as a Tyrannosaurus rex. More